Happy (well, maybe, maybe-not) New Year!

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

12/31/21

Aloha All --

Happy New Year.  I guess.  My New Year's resolution is to not get my hopes up about 2022 like I did for 2021.  It (2021) started off, before January 6, with high hopes.  Then...well...not so much.  After bottoming out the roller coaster ride continued with a high point of getting vaccinated and breathing a sigh of relief. We relished our re-found freedom, including a trip to the mainland in the spring.  Then...Delta.  Sh*t.  Bottoming again. But then up we went with some fabulous demonstrations of what humans can do right -- like flying a drone on another planet!  Yay.  Even an international trip in late summer, wow!  And Christmas seemed to be going to be ok, when the roller coaster took another dive with Omicron.  I think I'm going to barf up my cotton candy. So this New Year's Eve I'm just going to wait and see what happens next. That way I figure I will either be pleasantly surprised or pre-resigned to more avoidable human folly.

Ok, we had a pretty good Christmas and I hope you did too.  I gave Karen a honu (turtle) pendant which she liked, and a blouse which didn't fit.  50% isn't bad.  My record of buying her something to wear hasn't been all that great, and you'd think I would learn my lesson.  I have managed to pull it off in the past, but not this time.  She gave me a golf shirt, a golf glove, and a nice fuzzy blanket to keep me

Abandoned Nene Egg

warm during my "contemplative naps."  I put the shirt and the glove to work on Tuesday, when I joined Karen and her usual golf partner for a round at Makalei.  I think the glove actually helped my long shots, and it looked really cool, too, almost like I knew what I was doing. We saw a fair number of peacocks and about 8 mating pairs of nenes.  The lower number of nenes has us worried a bit, because they might have had a difficult time with that big storm we had that brought down limbs and uprooted trees right where they

My Orange Ball To The Left

usually nest.  And then the clean-up effort involved lots of power saws and heavy equipment.  Hopefully most of them survived ok and simply decided to relocate somewhere with less damage and disruption.  At least one nest didn't make it, though, because we found an abandoned nene egg on the edge of one of the greens, not far from a stand of trees.  Oh, and I nearly whacked one nene with my tee-shot, which wound up lying next to it.  Maybe it was contemplating adopting it to replace the lost egg???

Tonight (New Year's Eve) we're having dinner at our house with my college friend and his wife.  This is the couple who own a small coffee farm not far from us in Holualoa.  They've decided to sell their place, however, to take advantage of the insane housing market and buy something more manageable that requires less work. They're in the process of prepping the house and "staging" it for the market, and it will be interesting to find out what this has involved.  I've decided that 2021 doesn't deserve a pyrotechnic send-off, so this year the dogs in the neighborhood will get a break from my usual noisy firework extravaganza.

Ok, I hope you have a fun, healthy, and reflective New Year's.  All the best for 2022.  We're all going to need it, I think.  Take care.

'Twas The Night... Bra, What Dat Clattah?

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

12/24/21

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Wow, this really sneaked up on me.  For some reason (geezerhood, probably), I had the idea that

Christmas was Sunday.  Ho ho, huh?  So, on this Christmas Eve, I'll reprint a Hawaiian Pidgin version of the classic "'Twas the Night before Christmas."  There are a number of these around, so I chose one that gives you the idea and is still mostly decipherable. You still may have to do a little "googling" to understand some of the references. Enjoy, and Merry Christmas!

Was da night bafo' Christmas,
and all ova' da place
Not even da geckos
was showin' their face.

Da stockings was hangin' on top da TV?
('Cause no mo' fireplace in Hawai'i)
Da kids stay all crashed, my old man too.
They leave all da work for you-know-who.

So me, I stay pickin' up alla their toys,
When - boom! - outside get only big noise!
I run to da window, I open 'em up,
I stick out my head and I yell, "Eh! Whassup?!"

And then, I no can ba-lieve what I seen!

Was so unreal, you know what I mean?
This fat haole guy get his reindeers in my yard!
And reindeers not housebroken, you know, as' why hard!

But nemmind, this Christmas, so I cut 'em some slack.
Plus, had uku pile presents pokin' outta his sack!
So I wait 'till he pau tie up his reindeer,
Then I yell out da window, "Huui! Brah, ova hea!"

An' I tell 'em first thing, when I open da door,
"Eh, Hemo your shoes! You going dirty my floor!"
He take off his boots, he tell, "You know who I am?"
I go, "Ho! From the smell, must be Mr. Toe Jam!"

He make mempachi eyes and he go, "Ho, ho, ho!"
By now, I stay thinking this guy kinda slow!
He look like my Tutu, but little less weight,
And his beard stay so white, mo' white than shark bait!

He stay all in red, specially his nose,
And get reindeer spit on top his nice clothes!
But him, he no care; he just smile at me,
And he start fo' put presents unda-neath da tree.

I tell 'em, "Eh, brah, no need make li'dat,
And watch where you step! You going ma-ke da cat!"
Then, out from his bag, he pull one brand new computah,
Choke video games, and one motorized scootah!

He try for fill up da Christmas socks too,
But had so much pukas, all da stuff went fall troo.
When he pau, I tell 'em, "Eh Santa, try wait!
I get plenty leftovahs, I go make you one plate!"

But he nevah like hang, he had so much fo' do;
Gotta make all them small kids' wishes come true.
So I wave 'em goodbye, and I flash 'em da shaka,
And I tell 'em, "Mele Kalikimaka!"

When he hear that, he stop and I telling you true,
He go, "Garans ball-barans! Merry Christmas to you!" (Originally Posted on Katy's Hawaii Adventure, 2008)

Schmutz In The Pool Pump, Coquis In Pots, Splinters On Fairways

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

12/18/21

Aloha Everybody --

Hope your Christmas season is going well.  Ours is ok, but our carpet cleaning disarray has put us bit behind on getting out our cards this year and we just got finished decorating the living room tree on Thursday.  I finally finished my shopping and found something for Karen, but I'll keep it secret in case she sees this.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she'll like the two things I got her.

On Wednesday my pool guy was able to fix our circulation problem.  I was worried that it might have been due to something clogging the suction line -- a real problem since cleaning it out would require a snake that could go around 90d corners.  The pipe, by the way, is encased in concrete and it isn't possible to get at it directly.  Well, it turned out that some debris had gotten past the filter and was partially clogging the pump itself.  My guy took the pump apart and cleaned out the schmutz.  Voila!  Problem solved.  Almost.  My little robot cleaner still wasn't working right so I took it apart again and found a small leaf blocking the water flow.  I removed it and that's all it took to get him back to his old self. All is well... for now.

The rain we've been having has really revved up the coqui frogs.  My neighbor has caught about 20 in the last week.  Our property isn't as attractive to them as his, but still I've caught 5.  Three of my recent kills were below our study window, near our vegetable garden.  One was a female who was being wooed by a male that up until now has been fairly quiet.  I got the female easily (the females are bigger and not as wary), but I couldn't spot the male until the next night, when I found him in a stack of garden pots (great place for brooding eggs). I caught him, then the next day I looked for eggs in the pots.  Damn if there wasn't another male hiding in there!  A regular coqui condo!  I sprayed him with citric acid and caught him by hand.  I went through all the pots and didn't find any more frogs or eggs, but I sprayed everything and bagged it up tight.  Hopefully this will take care of the problem for awhile.

Karen's golf course opened up again after the big storm and she was able to play on Wednesday with

Lots of Toothpicks

her snow-bird friend.  She said it looked like a tornado had gone through, with lots of limbs and even large trees down.  The workers had cleared the course but are still working on hauling away the trunks and limbs.  The wind must have been really powerful on those slopes.  She saw quite a few peacocks, so they seemed to have made it ok.  She also saw a fair number of Nenes, but nearly all were just solo.  We're hoping the mates are ok, and maybe just nesting.  Nesting usually doesn't happen this early, though, so we're still a little worried.  Karen will be monitoring the situation.

While Karen was playing golf I worked out at PF. I was pleased to see few people there, and as I've mentioned before, the mask and distancing policy is rigorously enforced.  Plus everyone is conscientious about wiping down the machines with disinfectant before and after using them.  This means that before I touch one it has been disinfected twice. In short, even with the new nasty variant around I felt pretty safe.  Oh, by the way, I ordered a couple of self-tests online and I'm keeping them handy in case we need a quick check.  I got the Lucira brand because it is nearly as accurate as a lab test in terms of correctly detecting both positive cases and negative cases  This kind costs more, but I think my insurance will reimburse me -- I'll let you know.

Off to market and the beach for our usual breakfast picnic.  Stay warm and healthy and be good for goodness sake -- Santa (and Alexa) is watching.....

Problems in Paradise: From Drought to Drowning

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

12/11/21

Aloha Everybody!

Last week I mentioned that we were getting some rain and that it had snowed on Mauna Kea. "Some" rain wound up being a total of 3.4" at our house and there was a bona fide blizzard on Mauna Kea.  However, the rain for us wasn't as much a problem as the wind that came with it. Our internet was knocked out for almost 2 days, and some nearby areas also lost power.  Both north and south of us the rainfall was much greater -- as much as 14 inches!  Things quieted down late Monday and starting Tuesday we were able to begin getting things cleaned up. However, as I write this our pool still isn't functioning the way it should -- our pool guy and I cleaned out the leaves that had blown in, but some debris must have gotten into the filtration system and messed up the pump or clogged the lines somewhere so that the water is barely recirculating.  And of course three days with very little sun has cooled the water to below our tolerance level.  Finally, no sun has also put us in the red for producing electricity so far this month.  We might be able to make that back up if we have enough sunny days over the next few weeks.

On more positive news, the carpet cleaners returned Thursday and finished the rest of our

!5 and Still Looking Good

carpeting.  We again lucked out on the weather, which was sunny while they were here and for most of the rest of the day.   We did get a little rain that night, but by then the carpet had pretty well dried out.  We'll move stuff back today, but yesterday we took the opportunity while the other part of the house was still drying to put up our Christmas tree in the living room.  No decorations other than lights yet, but it should be done by Monday. This is a pre-lit tree that is on its 15th season and still looking pretty good.  It comes in three sections that we can squish into a single box for storage -- with a LOT of effort.

Speaking of Christmas, I have to finish buying presents.  Ugh.  I find this more and more challenging, particularly when it comes to getting something for Karen.  And of course it means venturing into a store somewhere or even worse, going online and picking something based on just photos.  I really am a terrible shopper, to the point where I nearly have a panic attack when I'm faced with a huge selection of merchandise.  Where does all that stuff go, anyway?  Having lots of choices is my idea of hell. Karen says I really don't have to get her anything, but I've been married long enough to know that would NOT be a good idea....

No golf this week.  Karen's favorite course is closed while they try to fix the damage caused by the

Hope the Birds are OK

storm. We did get to Planet Fitness yesterday and worked out for the first time since before Thanksgiving.  It felt good, particularly since we haven't been able to exercise in our pool this week.  However, we immediately counteracted the health benefits of the workout by having lunch at Taco Bell.  A guilty pleasure if there ever was one.

Ok, off to market and our beach breakfast picnic.  Take care, stay warm, keep a grip on reality.

 

Snow On The Volcano, Carpet Chaos

 [Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

12/4/21

Aloha All --

Winter has arrived in paradise!  This week we got our first snow of the season.  No shoveling for me,

Mauna Kea Summit

though, because it fell only on the top of 13k-foot Mauna Kea, where the telescopes are. Blizzard conditions are forecast for the weekend, with up to a foot of snow and 100 mph winds. The snow is visible from Kailua, and it has given a boost to the Holiday Spirit.  We finally have a decent rain that started last night and is still going on as I write this.  Haven't checked my rain gauge yet but it should be a fair amount. The timing isn't the best, though because this will cancel our usual Saturday morning beach breakfast and trip to the market,  another instance of our normal schedule being thrown off by the holidays.

I now have outdoor lights up and nearly all of my decorations, but the neighbors have been slow to get with the season.  So far there is just two others that have outdoor lights.

As if the rain and the usual Christmas discombobulation weren't enough, we had our carpets in the main part of the house cleaned on Thursday.  It was been many years since this was done, and we've been putting it off too long. Some people don't make this a big deal, and just clean in the "high traffic" areas. Not us. Karen insisted on moving a lot of the furniture and this in turn required relocating a lot of stuff temporarily.  And it takes a while for the carpet to dry before you can fully get back to normal. Thursday was sunny and helped a lot for partial drying,  and Friday wasn't bad until evening when the rain started. Today we will probably be able to move most of stuff back in and maybe get our Christmas tree up.  I can see the allure of the current fashion here which is to install stone tile everywhere in a house.  Last week we went through an open-house at a $1.8 million place nearby that even had concrete floors!  

We're not done with the carpet cleaning, either. On Thursday the crew will return and do the two guest bedrooms.  This will will require less effort to get things ready, thankfully

No golf this week for me, though Karen may play tomorrow with her Oregon friend who arrived Wednesday for a short visit.  Also, her regular golf partner is eager to go sometime next week, and they may make it a threesome. No Planet Fitness this week, either.  This is my yearly holidaze slugfest.

Ok, that's it. Take care. Stay warm. Stay safe. Avoid buggy people. Find something good to think about...

Holidaze Discombobulation Begins

 [Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

11/27/21

Aloha All!  

Hau'oli La Pelehu! (Happy Thanksgiving!)  Funny note:  in Hawaiian, "pelehu" means puffed up or swollen, so the phrase is literally, "Happy Swollen Day."  Seems right to me...

Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving.  Ours was pretty good.  It was a pot luck at a neighbor's house.  My fears about too much togetherness were only partly realized.  There were about 20 people but we

Dinner Guests Arriving

ate on an open-air lanai well spread out.  The real test will come in about a week, however, when the virus will have had time to do its deed.  I'll let you know.  The new variant that has been identified in South Africa sounds scary, but we need much more data before assessing how bad it will be. Mutations occur when there are lots of vulnerable targets to infect, and unvaccinated people are indeed vulnerable. Cases that occur in those who are vaccinated reach the same level of viral load as unvaccinated, but the data show the amount of the virus declines much more quickly.  This means, of course, that those who choose not to get the vaccine are contributing to the emergence of problematic variants and thereby prolonging and worsening this sh*t show.

Karen and I played golf on Wednesday instead of our usual Tuesday and opted to forgo our weekly Planet Fitness workout altogether.  Wednesday's round continued my slide toward mediocrity -- no pars, no bogeys, no birdies, no skittles, no wigglies, no banshees this time.  Actually I did ok, and hit quite a few good tee shots, but I wasn't all that consistent on the follow up shots.  Karen again got a par and several bogeys. Karen's golf buddy may be available again soon, so I may be taking a break for a while.  That's ok by me.  I've really enjoyed the outings but I definitely resisted getting totally hooked on the game.

Received my replacement skylight opener and installed it on Thanksgiving day.  Wow, what a difference!  I put the new mechanism on the heaviest of the two skylights and it is now much, much easier to open.  I'll put the one it replaced on the other skylight which right now has the defective unit. This will require a visit by my handyman to help move our heavy dining room table top so that we can set up a ladder underneath it, probably next week some time.  So far I consider the whole project a definite success.

Well, as I've mentioned in previous years, I have mixed feelings about the holidays.  I've begun putting up outside decorations and lights, and maybe tomorrow we'll get out our artificial tree.  It's a bit disheartening though to be bombarded with the commercial hype of buy, buy, buy.  This year we started to see Christmas stuff in the stores before Halloween! And the Black Friday sales seem to now go on for weeks.  I try to ignore as much of it as I can, and to avoid going to some of the shopping centers unless absolutely necessary until after January 1.  Oh, and the tv schedule is all messed up with Christmas specials and football games taking the place of my favorite shows.  Bah, humbug!  Occasionally, though, the true spirit of the season breaks through and I get the warm fuzzies, so I don't feel entirely like the Grinch. 

Good news on the medical front.  I saw my retinal doctor yesterday and I got another reprieve from an eyeball jab.  That makes 2 1/2 months since the last injection.  My next appointment will be in 6 weeks, so if I hold out until then it will be a record interval of 4 months!  Although I was able to deal with injections every 4-6 weeks, it certainly is a relief to go this long between them.  My acuity in the bad eye hasn't improved much (20/80 to 20/100) and never will most likely.  But if it will stay where it is and my left eye remains at 20/20, I can deal with it.

Ok. Off for our usual Saturday morning routine.  A welcome antidote to Holidaze Discombobulation. Take care, enjoy the season as much as you can, try to stay sane and healthy.

Let's Bogey; Skylight Blues; Foreclosure No Mo'

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

11/20

Aloha Everyone!

The front that came through last week brought us hardly a drop of rain.  We did have a couple of days of mostly cloudy weather and an uptick in humidity, but that's about it.  The remnants of the front are still around and it has been warmer -- we even ate dinner outside by our pool the other night, and we ran the a.c. in our bedroom a couple of nights this week.  We did get some light sprinkles Thursday and Friday night -- not enough to do the garden much good but enough to wake up the coquis and to obscure the lunar eclipse.  I see from the weather reports that at night you've been dipping below the temperature at which water turns to ice.  As I recall that can be downright painful....

In Covid news, our island inched up another notch in terms of vaccinations to 68%, still going slowly but at least improving.  The daily infection rates have been dropping a bit, too, but we'll have to see what happens after Thanksgiving -- lots of gatherings means lots of opportunities for viruses to crash the party.  At least with breakthrough cases the severity has dropped and the demand for hospital facilities has eased off.  The unvaccinated folk will at least have a shot at a ventilator. We're going to a friend's house for a pot luck, and I'm a little nervous because there will be almost 20 people.  We will be outside most of time, and I plan on wearing my mask.  We're pretty sure that all of those attending will be vaccinated, but that still doesn't mean we will be 100% safe. The odds are good enough though to give it a try.

My skylight project is all done and it really looks better.  Of course, this is one of those projects where only I notice the difference.  I'm going to have to revisit this in the near future though, because one of the opening mechanisms has to be replaced because of a gear problem.  I've located a source online and it should be a simple job.  I'm also toying with the idea of installing motorized openers with remote controls.  Right now we open and close the skylights with a long rod that attaches to a crank mechanism. It would be much more convenient to just push a button.  On the other hand, the motors and buttons would add to my growing inventory of electronic gizmos and gadgets that could go bad....

A big event in the neighborhood this week was that a boarded-up house at the end of the street is finally getting some attention.  The property has been in limbo for years because of legal issues surrounding its foreclosure. Several years ago a squatter tried to move in but the neighbors got together and nipped that in the bud.  It was then boarded up to prevent others from trying again and has been an eyesore ever since.  But suddenly this week a big dumpster arrived and someone is cleaning out the debris and starting to fix it up.  The neighbors are ecstatic.  This is certainly the time for a new owner (or maybe the bank) to fix it up and maybe sell it.  Our real estate market is hot, and houses are selling for ridiculous prices, including ones that aren't particularly desirable. This will also spice up the neighborhood gossip, too, as we find out more and speculate about the progress.

Enjoying the Show

My golf outing this week went well, though I only got one bogey (Karen got 2 pars and several bogeys).  In general I think I played better and more consistently.  Some of my tee shots were surprisingly good this time, but my putting wasn't so hot. Yet again the weather was beautiful, although the course is getting very dry and the fairways were somewhat brown.  However, the dry grass allowed the ball to roll a long way and probably saved several strokes on the downhill holes.  But on the uphill holes there were a few times when the ball rolled backward away from the

Snack Time

green, despite my loud verbal commands not to. Bad ball!  We counted 28 Nenes this time.  Remember, these are the endangered state bird that looks like a Canada Goose, but is in fact indigenous to Hawai'i and has a number of characteristics that are quite different. One that is the same, however, is the poop that we have to watch out for when we play.  Golf courses are a haven for Nenes.  The have ample ground cover in the rough areas for nesting,  plenty of room to forage on the fairways and greens, and even ponds and small lakes to swim.  Nenes migrate but not very far, usually just from one end of

Definitely A Tough Shot From Here

the island to the other, and from higher to lower elevations.  They'll be at Makalei from now until late next spring, and we should start seeing babies in mid-winter.  

 

 

Ok, that's it for now.  Hope you've got your winter gear ready. Make sure that thing ... do you call it a "snow shovel?" is handy.  Heh, heh.